John "Sean" Elmes
President
John received a M.S. degree and Ph.D. from the University of Central Florida, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with a Physics minor from The College of New Jersey. John's focus is on the development of advanced power conversion devices and systems for new and specialized applications. John has a background in solar DC-DC conversion, high power-density and high efficiency DC-DC converters, and development of digital control structures for new and unconventional applications. His current research interests are low to medium power conversion and inversion, hybrid/electric vehicle power management, high density converter design and packaging, as well as solar battery charging.
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Antoine Khoury
Chief Financial Officer
Mr. Khoury received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Central Florida in 1988. He started his career working with a consulting firm for approximately 7 years before joining the public sector where he got most of his experience in managing consultants and negotiating new contracts. He joined ApECOR in 2002 as the president and contract manager. He has successfully negotiated several contracts with the Department of Defense and with commercial clients such as John Deere and Emerson Electronics and ensured that the contracts were completed on time and within budget.
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Rene Kersten
VP Hardware Development
Rene received his Graduate Engineer Degree in Electrical Engineering & Communication Technology from the University of Ilmenau (Germany) in 2004. Rene is well skilled at the complete design process of developing power electronics converters including simulation, parts selection, cost analysis & optimization, PCB layout, software development, packaging, testing and final performance verification. He is experienced in high-power converters for hybrid electric vehicle applications, solar-powered converters, battery chargers, inverters and electronic ballasts for fluorescent tubes with PFC.
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Michael Pepper
VP Software Development
Michael received his Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida in 2005. In 2009 he completed his Master's degree in Electrical Engineering also at UCF. During his undergraduate career he participated in the 2005 International Future Energy Challenge where the UCF team received an award for most innovative design. With four years of experience he is now a full time design engineer at ApECOR, where he focuses mainly on digital control, complex control theory, DSP, communication, and complete digital system integration.
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Chris Hamilton
Chris received his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Central Florida in 2009 and 2010, respectively. In his time through University as well as through his professional career, Chris has focused primarily on ground up product design on the digital controls of power electronics modules for DC/DC, AC/DC and DC/AC applications with power levels ranging from 200W to 65kW. In addition, system integration work has been carried out on the 100kW power level for grid connected energy storage products. His primary focus is on digital control loop design to meet the needs of safety and power quality compliance for grid-interactive inverters as well as advanced solar power control techniques. Through government sponsored activities, Chris has also worked extensively with advanced hybrid voltage and current mode control techniques to enhance the scalability and ability to parallel inverters with seamless hot swap abilities, providing uninterruptible power to critical loads.
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Dr. Issa Batarseh
Co-Founder, Non-Executive Director
He received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees - all in Electrical Engineering - from the University of Illinois in 1983, '85 and '90, respectively.
Dr. Batarseh was a visiting Assistant Professor at Purdue University, Calumet, from 1989 to 1990. He joined UCF in 1991 and has distinguished himself
by establishing the Florida Power Electronics Center (FPEC), conducting significant scholarly research which has resulted over 85 published papers in
refereed journals, and more than 250 refereed papers at international conferences. He is a Fellow of National Academy Inventors (NAI), IEEE and the AAAS and,
in 2004, received the Davis Productivity Award for Best Invention recognized by the state of Florida. Over the years, Dr. Batarseh has secured more than $12 million
for his work in developing innovative power electronic systems to convert energy collected in solar panels into domestic electricity grids and similar topics in power
electronics. His work focuses on the design of inverter technologies to achieve high efficiency, low cost inverter topologies, with simple and effective protection techniques,
enabled with advanced digital control strategies for enhanced performance, fault protection, system integration, and health monitoring for power grid. His research findings
have been commercialized by the private sector, resulting in licensed patents and being founding partner of two technology companies, Petra Solar and Apecor, for the
commercializing of solar energy power electronics conversion systems. He has received over 26 patents. He graduated 42 Ph.D students and more than 70 MS and undergraduate students.
Full CV [PDF Format]